


Nightfall

by Tamari



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Forum: Goldenlake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamari/pseuds/Tamari
Summary: He’s made his decision. She helps him make his peace. Alex/Delia, written for Pentathlon at Goldenlake.





	Nightfall

Unlike Alex, Delia has no friends to betray.

Oh, she giggles with the other court ladies and she flirts with the men, but they are not her friends. Perhaps a few of them are foolish enough to believe they are. Friendship doesn’t matter to her. 

It matters to him.

“When they find out, they’ll kill me,” he confesses to her one night, as they lie entwined in her bed.

“Not if you kill them first.” Delia runs her long nails up his bare back. The paint is chipping, she notices.

Alex shivers under her touch. “I could. I’m a better swordsman than any of them. But… they’re my friends. They were the first people to welcome me into the palace.”

“You’re too softhearted,” Delia says. “They wouldn’t be your friends if they knew who you truly are. And would Jon be your friend if he knew where you are right now?” She pushes her body into his to demonstrate. 

“He’d be angry, but he’d never betray me.” _Like I’m betraying him_ is understood.

“Betrayal is such an ugly word,” Delia whispers. She presses her pillowy lips to his, her mind elsewhere.

At the Midwinter parties last week, he stood with his friends. She remembers the admiring looks other ladies shot toward the group, especially toward Jon with his brilliant eyes and charming smile. Alex is handsome, too, but he always stands apart, his smile too frozen to be real. Maybe she is the only one who can tell. Maybe not. Other than requisite social gatherings, he is usually with her or out on the practice courts alone.

“Do you avoid them now because you hate them, or because you fear them?” Delia asks.

“I’m not afraid of them,” Alex murmurs back to her. “I’m not afraid.”

“So you hate them?”

Alex is quiet for a while, then he says, “Sometimes. Sometimes I hate them. Things are so easy for them. Alan… I trained my whole life to be a swordsman, and a skinny little boy comes to the palace and picks it up in a few months. And then they all say he’s the best squire in the Eastern Lands.”

“It probably wasn’t as easy as it looked,” Delia points out. “Maybe other people think it’s easy for you too.” She isn’t just talking about swordsplay.

Alex sighs. “What’s easy? I practice day and night,” he says. Then, as his thoughts seem to follow hers, “Betrayal isn’t easy, either, Delia… I’m behind Roger, you know that, but I can’t pretend I don’t — I don’t have a conscience. Roger is more powerful and educated and shrewd than Jon. He was my knight-master. But they are — they were my friends.”

Delia runs her fingers through his dark hair. “I know. I know.” 

She doesn’t know, of course. She has never in her life had close friends like his, friends who profess they’d die for each other, kill for each other. She adores Roger, but that relationship is hardly equal. 

“I can’t sleep because I picture their faces when they find out what I’ve done,” he admits.

“Think about my face instead,” Delia suggests. “And Roger’s. Think about how happy we will be. How triumphant. _Vindicated._ ”

“You’ve been spending too much time in the library,” Alex says with a smirk. “But I will try.”

“Try tonight,” she says, blinking her green eyes slowly. “It’s getting late.”

She rests her head back against his pillows, pulls the blanket over both of them, and wonders if what they have counts as friendship, love, or something else.


End file.
